logo
Unlike Fitbit, this smartwatch tracks blood pressure, and it's down to only $21

Unlike Fitbit, this smartwatch tracks blood pressure, and it's down to only $21

Yahoo06-03-2025

Have you put that 2025 exercise regimen into effect yet? It's March, what are you waiting for? Maybe you want to get a fitness tracker first. While many people consider the Apple Watch to be the gold standard, the price is a bit steep. Well, there's a smartwatch that's much more affordable and still has tons of features that rival the Apple bestseller. Meet the Popglory! It's easy to use, and at $21, can you really go wrong? (The answer is no, you cannot.)
This is an immensely popular device that shares several features with the Apple Watch, but it's just $28 right now with the on-page discount code. Compare that with the most bare-bones Apple Watch model you can buy, the Apple Watch SE, which starts at around $199. Meanwhile, Fitbit's most basic smartwatch, the Versa 4, is considered a deal at $179 instead of its usual $200.
There are a lot of budget smartwatches on the market, but most lack the quality that would make them worth the trouble. That's not the case with the Popglory, fans say.
Of course, it tracks things like calories burned, steps walked, heart rate and even how well you slept — you know, all the smartwatch metrics you'd expect. But it also reads blood pressure, a feature absent from both the Fitbit and Apple Watch. If you sit too long, it will remind you to stand up and move around. There are even buttons to control your music.
Compared with many smartwatches we've seen at this price, the Popglory commands stellar reviews and has a wider range of functions. Plus, in keeping with its moniker, it's available in seven colors, including understated pink and vibrant purple.
This affordable smartwatch has received over 12,000 five-star reviews from customers who praise its accuracy and overall functionality.
"The Popglory watch does more than any current Fitbit watch," one stat-tracking shopper said. "I had a Fitbit that took blood pressure. Now the Fitbits, for some reason, do not take blood pressure. I have had the Popglory [at the] doctor, and I had the same blood pressure within two points as my doctor got. That is fantastic."
"Very efficient," said another metric-minded buyer. "It tells my blood pressure, my heart rate and my oxygen level. ... There are so many wonderful features on this watch. It almost acts like an Apple Watch, and it connects to my Apple phone just perfectly. If something goes wrong with this watch, I am sure to get another. But I've had it for a little over a year now and it's still doing wonderful."
Many users have commented on its hefty runtime: "I bought this last year, and I love it so much. It is pretty customizable and accurate. I love the battery life on it. You charge for one hour and it stays charged for about three days!"
"I'm loving this smartwatch. It isn't huge," another five-star fan said. "Great selection of faces to choose from. App seems to work great so far. I can't sleep with a watch on, so unsure about the sleep feature. Seems to be holding battery life well. Has a feature to tell you to get up and get active — who doesn't need that?"
Despite all its great features, the Popglory is missing a big one — it's not waterproof. But for the price, reviewers say that's a fair trade-off. "I really like the sleep tracker on this watch, and the quality is very good," another wearer said. "The only downside is that it's not waterproof, but for the price, I can't complain. Fantastic watch for the money."
"This is an amazing watch ... great quality but without the Apple Watch price," a final fan said. But they cautioned: "The downside is it may cause skin irritation to some."
The reviews quoted above reflect the most recent versions at the time of publication.
If you have Amazon Prime, you'll get free shipping, of course. Not yet a member? No problem. You can sign up for your free 30-day trial here. (And by the way, those without Prime still get free shipping on orders of $35 or more.)

Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Liquid Glass: What is Apple's new design feature, and when is it available?
Liquid Glass: What is Apple's new design feature, and when is it available?

The Hill

time13 minutes ago

  • The Hill

Liquid Glass: What is Apple's new design feature, and when is it available?

(NEXSTAR) — If you're an Apple fanatic, Monday was a big day for you as the California company held its annual showcase, unveiling its next major software update. As it often does, one design feature expected to appear in that update is already catching attention: Liquid Glass. The update itself, iOS 26, includes numerous features, like Call Screenings on iPhone and expanded Apple Intelligence capabilities. It will also offer new layouts and redesigns for Apple tech. Apple's last major update, iOS 18, brought personalization options iPhone users had hardly been able to experience before. Home screen apps and widgets could be moved and placed more fluidly, and even tinted to certain colors. Liquid Glass will, in a sense, go in the opposite direction of the latter. Described as 'a new translucent material that reflects and refracts its surroundings' by Apple, Liquid Glass is meant to bring 'greater focus to content, and [deliver] a new level of vitality across controls, navigation, app icons, widgets, and more.' The design will be available across all of the company's platforms (as long as your device is eligible to receive iOS 26) and, most notably, will make menus and toolbars transparent. 'It beautifully refracts light and dynamically reacts to your movement with specular highlights,' Alan Dye, the vice president of human interface for Apple, explained in a video shared by the company on Monday. When it becomes available, Liquid Glass will also round the corners of otherwise rectangular features, like the bottom bar of your Notes app. It can work with the aforementioned personalization released during iOS 18 or as a standalone design option, according to Dye. As satisfying as it may sound, some have expressed concerns about the design. Users on Reddit pointed to the contrast, which some said made portions of the text 'unreadable.' Others said they hoped they'd be able to turn it off. Some also pointed to the similarities between Liquid Glass and Windows Aero, the design language brought to Microsoft Windows Vista in 2006. You may remember this update, which made aspects like the top of an Internet Explorer tab or other Windows software appear glass-like. You can see a newer version of that feature in the image below. It's possible that Apple will tweak the Liquid Glass feature before iOS 26 is released in fall. If you participate in the Apple Developer Program, you can test Liquid Glass and other iOS 26 features now. If you're in the Apple Beta Software Program, you'll be able to experience a public beta version of iOS 26 next month, according to Apple. Other Apple users will need to wait a few months to get the new software. Apple didn't have an exact date for the release of iOS 26, but if it is like previous updates, it will likely be available around September.

Apple's Liquid Glass is Windows Vista done well
Apple's Liquid Glass is Windows Vista done well

Engadget

time18 minutes ago

  • Engadget

Apple's Liquid Glass is Windows Vista done well

It's hard to look at Apple's new "Liquid Glass" aesthetic and not think about Windows Vista, Microsoft's much-maligned OS which also touted transparencies and glass-like effects as a bold new vision for computing. You can see the similarities between Apple's UI and Vista's "Windows Aero" design language everywhere, from the glassified app icons in iOS 26 and macOS Tahoe 26 which look a lot like VIsta's glossy icons, to the transparent backgrounds used in drop down menus, which hearken back to VIsta's transparent window borders. The key difference is that Apple is just doing it all better. (Sorry, not sorry, Windows fans.) While Microsoft started off with an intriguing idea, it failed to execute the Windows Aero UI well in Vista. Mostly, that's because Vista itself was a huge mess — it was far slower than Windows XP, it was notoriously buggy and it handled drivers poorly. And if you actually wanted to partake in the glory of Aero transparency bars, you needed a computer with a powerful GPU. That was far more rare in 2007 than it is today, when even integrated graphics can run basic 3D and fancy UI elements well. With its homegrown chips, Apple also provides decent graphics capabilities in its devices that support iOS 26, iPadOS 26 and other new software releases with Liquid Glass. It also helps that Liquid Glass isn't really a huge change for Apple, unlike the jump from Windows XP to Vista. Apple has been creeping towards a flashier UI and more widespread use of transparencies ever since iOS 7 was released in 2013, which dropped the archaic skeuomorphic design trend in favor of a flatter and more stylish aesthetic. So sure, your icons and menus may have a bit more shine to them in iOS 26, but they mostly work the way you remember. (You could also argue Apple itself kickstarted the move towards transparencies in desktop operating systems with the original Mac OS X in 2001, which gave its iconic dock a glossy background.) I can argue for the overall wisdom of Apple's Liquid Glass, at least compared to Windows Vista, and personally I also think it gives iOS a much-needed dose of personality. But I can't really convince you otherwise if you think it looks ugly, as many of my Engadget colleagues do. Senior News Editor Avery Ellis calls it "busy and obnoxious," and Editor-in-Chief Aaron Souppouris noted that "it truly feels like Aero, rooted in the mid '00s.... I don't need light refracting around my pause button." Fair complaints! And as usual, you can also reduce transparency effects and motion elements in Apple's Accessibility Settings, if these elements truly bother you. But after spending a bit of time with the first iOS 26 developer beta, I'm more intrigued by Liquid Glass than anything else. It makes app icons look like tiny jewels that I just want to touch, and I dig the transparency effects throughout the OS — they almost seem like a preview for a future where we're using holographic Apple devices. (That's also something I felt while using visionOS on the Vision Pro, which served as the launchpad for Liquid Glass.) I also genuinely love iOS 26's revamped Safari, which lets you browse completely in full screen. As you scroll down, the location bar at the bottom of your screen shrinks and gets out of the way. But if you scroll up or tap into the location bar, it pops back up to give you the sharing and navigation options you're used to. Devindra Hardawar for Engadget It could also be that I'm a sucker for novelty. Back in my Windows XP days, I used to use apps like WindowBlinds to customize the OS and add transparent effects. And there are signs that Apple may be going a bit too far with transparencies, like with the iOS 26's Control Center (above). It looks fine if you're swiping it down while inside an app, but if you're on the home screen, it's just one of many levels of glass-like windows. I could see that being a bit overbearing for some users. It's also worth noting that interface redesigns are often rejected at first glance, especially since you're seeing them abstracted through screenshots and videos. Even Apple's slick marketing magic doesn't replicate the experience of using Liquid Design. In my experience, iOS 26 really isn't that different from everything that came before. Once you get over the initial shock of a new interface, you may see it with new eyes. There's also still plenty of time until Apple's new operating systems arrive this fall though, and the company is often quick to tweak major design changes if beta users complain about them. I could see Apple toning down the Control Center's transparent background, or even better, giving users more control over the amount of Liquid Glass elements on your screen. Personally, I don't mind it when companies stretch their interface ideals a bit too far – there's always room to move back. That's far better than being too conservative and never really pushing your aesthetic vision forward.

Don't Let the Cult of Price Hold Crypto Back
Don't Let the Cult of Price Hold Crypto Back

Yahoo

time23 minutes ago

  • Yahoo

Don't Let the Cult of Price Hold Crypto Back

Cryptocurrency is too often viewed through the narrow lens of price. The dominant narrative surrounding Bitcoin, Ethereum, and the broader crypto market has become fixated on one idea: numbers go up. Did Bitcoin break $100,000? Did Ethereum double in a month? Is this altcoin going to the moon? Financial media, X pundits, and even crypto advocates routinely reduce an entire technological revolution to a speculative race to ever-higher prices. But this is like evaluating Apple or Nvidia solely by their stock movements while ignoring the iPhone or the GPUs powering AI infrastructure. It's a superficial way of thinking — and in crypto, it's also dangerous. In traditional markets, value is ultimately grounded in usage. The more products a company sells, the more revenue it generates. The more users it retains, the stronger its network effect. Apple isn't a $3 trillion company just because its stock price went up; it's because over a billion people use its ecosystem daily. Nvidia didn't become a Wall Street darling by sheer momentum; it built the most essential chips of the AI age. Stock price follows product-market fit. In crypto, this principle is often inverted — price comes first, and everything else becomes secondary or is this philosophy more deeply ingrained than in what might be called Saylorism — the ideology promoted by MicroStrategy's Michael Saylor, the loudest evangelist for Bitcoin-as-collateral. Under this worldview, the core utility of Bitcoin isn't transacting, building, or innovating — it's simply holding. You buy Bitcoin, never sell, borrow against it, repeat. The usage is the hoarding. Bitcoin is not a currency or platform under Saylorism — it's a speculative vault for value, designed to appreciate forever and justify more borrowing. In essence, every company becomes a leveraged Bitcoin fund, building its capital structure around a single bet: that the number always goes up. This is a radical departure from the logic that underpins healthy businesses. Traditional firms grow by creating value for others, through products, services, and infrastructure. Under Saylorism, value is internalized, circular, and ultimately recursive: you buy more Bitcoin because it's going up, which makes it go up, which justifies buying more. It resembles a corporate Ponzi mindset, not in legal terms, but in structural dynamics, where external adoption matters less than internal leverage. The market doesn't need new users, it just needs existing holders to keep believing. Compare that to Ethereum, the second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, which has taken a different path. While Ethereum is also subject to the gravitational pull of price speculation, and no one would argue that 'number goes up' doesn't matter; its value proposition is fundamentally rooted in usage. ETH is not just a store of value; it is the fuel of an economy. It powers decentralized applications, settles billions in stablecoin transactions, tokenizes real-world assets, mints NFTs, facilitates decentralized finance, and supports governance. ETH has demand because the network has demand. The more people use Ethereum, the more ETH is needed. And the more ETH is burned through transaction fees, the more supply becomes constrained. Price here reflects activity, not just belief. This distinction is profound. Ethereum's growth is tied to its functionality, to what it enables for users and developers. It resembles a traditional business more than a vault. It's like Amazon in the early 2000s: difficult to value by conventional metrics but serving a growing ecosystem. The difference between these two models–Bitcoin as gold and Ethereum as infrastructure–has sparked endless debate over whether they're even in competition. Some argue they're entirely different species: Bitcoin is a monetary metal; Ethereum is a decentralized world computer, perhaps likened to digital oil. It's fair to ask: what's ultimately more valuable, the gold you keep or the dollar you spend? Bitcoin's value depends on people holding it. Ethereum's value depends on people using it. Both are succeeding, but the paths are not the same. If cryptocurrency is to evolve beyond its speculative adolescence, it must shift away from price obsession and toward utility obsession. This means asking harder questions: What is this protocol used for? Who depends on it? What problem does it solve? Valuation must come from participation, not just price action. A blockchain that delivers real-world utility for finance, identity, coordination, or computation deserves appreciation. But it must earn it through adoption, not ideology. What if, instead of competing, Bitcoin and Ethereum found common ground and worked together? That's where the opportunity emerges: Ethereum serves as the most robust gateway for Bitcoin holders looking to access the broader world of decentralized finance. No network rivals Ethereum in terms of DeFi's depth and maturity. By converting BTC into Ethereum-compatible assets, holders can engage in a dynamic ecosystem of lending, staking, and yield generation, turning dormant Bitcoin into active, value-producing capital. Platforms like Aave, Lido, Ethena, and Maker enable BTC to participate in ways that static holding simply can't. The outcome? Mutual benefit: Ethereum attracts more liquidity, while Bitcoin gains much-needed utility. It's a powerful synergy that amplifies the strengths of both networks. Cryptocurrency is not just a dumb financial asset It's programmable money, digital property, frictionless transactions, decentralized coordination, and trustless finance. It's a reimagining of the internet's economic layer. But its long-term success depends on moving past the dopamine of daily price charts. Because in the end, the most valuable technologies aren't the ones with the flashiest tickers; they're the ones that get used. And usage, not hoarding, is what builds lasting in to access your portfolio

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into the world of global news and events? Download our app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store